Biblical Government vs.
Marriage Amendment

F. Earle Fox

[COMMENT: The article below is
more about Biblical Government than about homosexual marriage. It is
written to show that the proposed Marriage Amendment to the Constitution is not
a good idea. The amendment will not solve our
problem with homosexual marriage, and it will subvert the real point of having a
constitution and limited government. There are
better ways to deal with
homosexuality and marriage. E. Fox]

Americans, generally, do not understand their own history or
Constitution, they do not understand the Biblical form of civil government, nor
the Biblical notion of sex and gender. And we are only marginally obedient to
that which we think we know. We would not be in our present painful confusion
over sex, religion, and government if we were intelligently faithful. The way of
the cross is neither popular nor understood among Christians.

The presenting issue for this piece is the aggressive attempt to
legalize marriage between two persons of the same sex, but the deeper issue is
the nature of Biblical government. Most Americans are not aware that there is a
Biblical form of government, and many would react, that, if there were, it would
probably be un-American (as I thought for most of my life). We were founded as a
secular nation, were we not?

Yes, there is a Biblical form of government, and, no, we were
not founded as a secular nation.

The presenting issue is homosexual marriage and the retaliatory
"marriage amendment", but the presenting issue could equally be, for example,
abortion, free trade, socialism, one-world government, education, or limited
government. So this essay on Biblical government is appropriate to a wider range
of issues than homosexuality. Until we get under our belts the nature of our own
American historical and constitutional relation to the God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, and to the lordship of Jesus Christ, we will never find solid ground
for resolving any of the subsidiary issues.

I have worked since 1989 with Exodus, helping people out of the
homosexual lifestyle, and with the public policy issues surrounding
homosexuality both in the Episcopal Church and in educational and governmental
arenas. The proposed Constitutional amendment making heterosexual marriage the
national standard is not, I believe, a helpful way to deal with the threat of
homosexual marriage. It is an ill-informed and simplistic attempt to solve a
much deeper issue, the subversion of Biblical moral consensus in Western
Civilization.

The American public is getting understandably (but at least four
decades late) upset at the sexual degradation illustrated by the (almost for
sure planned) breast exposure at the 2004 Super Bowl.

But the matter runs much deeper. Lewd sexual behavior is
explicitly taught to children in many of our government-run schools (e.g.,
supported by the governor and department of education in Massachusetts). Not
long ago, child seduction into immoral and dangerous sexual behavior would have
been prosecuted as a criminal offense. But, if promiscuous, addictive, and
lethal homosexual behavior is to be blessed by marriage, why this outrage at the
exposure? Perhaps Miss Jackson and her friend were only doing what their public
schools had taught them. (Faithful Christians, and others with common sense,
will remove their children from government-run schools.)

Prior to the exposure incident, the Super Bowl "entertainment"
had already been pockmarked by Viagra ads and other sexual innuendoes --
bringing no noticeable outrage or turned-off TV sets. And as someone pointed
out, Miss Jackson left the stage a free woman, whereas the streaker at the same
event was escorted by the police.

The outrage is a bit uncomfortable, defensive, and monumentally
naive.

The American public, including clergy and political leadership,
have shown ourselves incompetent and unwilling to fight the spiritual warfare in
which Western Civ. has been engaged for the last 600 years -- but most obviously
since the sex-revolution of the 1960's.

Stated simply: because the Christian community did not integrate
the two Crown Jewels of Western Civ. (science and due process in civil law --
both given by God) into their Christian faith, therefore secularism and paganism
have been able systematically to undermine the Biblical foundations of
civilization -- which had begun with the excursion of Jewish Christians into the
surrounding pagan world. Western Civ. (including the two Crown Jewels) was built
on Judeo-Christian foundations, but over the last two centuries, secularists and
pagans have run Christians from the public arena.

The unmistakable symptom of Christian failure is our incapacity
to say, gracefully, in public, "Jesus is Lord." We have neither inner conviction
nor outer capacity to defend that assertion in public. If Jesus is indeed Lord,
why is a pagan sexuality in the ascendant? Why is the homosexual agenda
steam-rolling through our land? The Bible gives a clear answer: God is in charge
of history and God gives the ascendancy. He gave it to the Assyrians, to the
Babylonians, and to Rome. And then He gave it to the Christians.

But by the thirteenth century, Western Christians had already
begun to lose their vision of God. Slowly at first. Secularism gained momentum
in the Renaissance, and the Reformation did little, in the long run, to counter
it. Secularism continued on with the so-called "Enlightenment", and by the 20th
century had effectively run Christians from the public arena, especially media,
politics, and education.

God has given the homosexual agenda the ascendancy because
Christians do not know how, or do not wish, to respond with love and with
graceful reason. We do not know how to treat homosexual persons with dignity. We
just want the problem to go away. So God is putting the problem right in our
faces until we begin to be obedient to Him in this matter.

We will have to learn some hard lessons: (1) how to love our
enemies (the way of the cross); (2) how to do our homework researching the
nature of homosexual behavior (honest science); and (3) how to administer Godly
government. This essay is about the latter -- Godly government.

America is failing. We are far down the road to being one more
"has been" nation, and the West a "has been" culture. St. Augustine was right (The City of God) that a nation which does not honor God will not endure. The
barbarians from without can conquer only because of the rot already within.
Neo-barbarians are at the helm of the American Ship of State -- in both parties.

The following is a quick summary of a Biblical form of
government as intended by our founding fathers.

Society is all us folks out here in the public arena going
about our business. Civil government is limited (almost entirely) to the
role of "referee" for society. Government is not the society or the public, it
is the servant-referee for the public, to enforce values which the public has
assigned (via elected legislators) for the referee to enforce. As with football,
the referee has no authority to make up rules on its own. When it tries, it must
be quickly replaced because it has become tyrannical.

The political point of a Biblical view is the
acknowledgment our Sovereign -- which is our basis for moral consensus.
"Jesus is Lord" is a political claim. The "Lord" is whoever can give moral
authority to a consensus. Only God can do that. Civil government can bestow no
moral authority. It is only an institution for administering the moral consensus
already given by God. Jesus thus asserts authority over all affairs of heaven
and earth.

If we have no Sovereign, we also thereby have neither rights nor
obligations -- and thus no possibility of legitimacy of government, only
arbitrary force. Life is a free-for-all power-struggle with no morality and no
consensus.

The only way to secure a moral consensus is under the
will of God. Only the Creator can supply the objective foundation for obligating
persons possessed of free will. That is true because, as a logical fact, only
the Giver-of-existence can supply our reason-for-existence. Our reason for
existence is the meaning and source of all obligation, and therefore of the
objective distinction between right and wrong,. Law can get its legality only
from such a prior morality. And that can come only from our Creator.

Every society develops a "moral consensus", a general
understanding of the difference between good and bad, right and wrong. But a
consensus has moral objectivity only if founded on the law of God which
expresses the purpose of God for His creation.

"Values" are plural because each person, by nature of his
freewill, has his own set of values. Values in this individualistic sense cannot
provide an objective moral consensus. Individual values are good and necessary,
but ungoverned by the law of God, they create moral competition and chaos, not
consensus, every man doing what is right in his own eyes. Moral consensus comes
only when there is an obligation on all persons to obey a certain set of values.
Only the values of the Creator qualify.

Even if all the persons of a society happened to agree, that
consensus would not be objective in the required sense because any or all of
them could freely unchoose. There would be no obligation for them
to stay in agreement. What I choose, I can unchoose, so without God there
are no objective values, only the jungle of competing individual values -
vendetta law. Unless there is a majority consensus on an obligatory set of
values to be enforced, a free government will not survive. It will gravitate
toward larger size and increased meddling in the lives of its people.

As one 1850's Speaker of the House remarked, we will be ruled by
the Bible or by the bayonet. When the hearts of people are at odds with God and
with each other (plural and therefore conflicting values), when there is no
objective and obligatory moral consensus, civil government progressively
encroaches into our decisions to force us to behave -- increasingly according to
its own standards, not those of either the people or of God.

The Biblical answer is that civil government is morally and
legally bound to honor the standards of God as interpreted by the people. One
nation under God. The role of the Church is to be the conscience of
society. The Church has the role of helping people understand the law and grace
of God -- so that they can bring the values of God into the public arena. That
was the common opinion among America's founding fathers.

The true separation of Church and State requires (a) that
the State by itself will never be allowed to decide "the mind of God" --
i.e., autonomously to decide the difference between right and wrong, between
legal and illegal, and (b) that the Church will never hold the gun of
enforcement.

In other words, he who holds the gun of enforcement may not
decide how that enforcement will be used. And, on the other side, those who
help make the decision on how the enforcement will be directed may not wield
that enforcement. The deciding, that is to say, may not be coerced. It must come
from open, candid discussion.

That is the separation of powers which sustains a free people.
The wielders of power may not decide how it is to be used, and the deciders may
not wield the power. They must win by open, honest persuasion.

That is why the legislature, the judiciary, and the executive
are separated. The executive wields, the legislature decides what laws
will be enforced, and the judiciary decides against whom the force of law
will be wielded. The executive is bound to enforce according to the decisions of
the other two, with the legislature being the primary decider because it is the
most directly responsive to the people.

That separation of "deciders" from "wielders" explains why
judicial review of the constitutionality of laws must be curtailed so as to
be only advisory, not mandatory.

The constitution represents not only the technical process for
creating laws, it represents the basic moral vision of society. It represents "what
it means to be an American", the moral and spiritual consensus, the
worldview. That is why, of course, conflicting parties insist on their
interpretations of the Constitution.

Open, candid discussion of America's religious/moral vision is
the most important debate which can happen today, not the debate which should be
"constitutionally" suppressed. There is no possibility of having a "neutral"
moral vision as though a society could avoid taking a stand on moral issues.
Every law enforces someone's moral stand. So it is important that we discern the
right standard, i.e., the law and grace of God.

Nine Supreme Court judges, unelected and unaccountable to the
people, are legally incapable of final judgments on the moral consensus of
society, i.e., on "what the Constitution means". For them to attempt to do is
tyranny -- the arbitrary and unrestrained exercise of power.

Yet they and the Massachusetts Court, have tried to tell America
what it's moral vision must be. The courts have taken upon themselves the task
of creating our moral consensus -- as though they, like Caesar, thought they
were God. The vision must come from the people, and if it is to be a moral
vision, it must come from the people under God. Only a society under God can
create a moral consensus. The courts cannot create it, they can only respect and
follow it -- or subvert it and thus render themselves outlaw courts.

The primary role of the courts, therefore, is to determine who
has broken the law and punishment for the guilty. Thoughts they might have about
the constitutionality of a law can be only advisory. The executive and judicial
branches are experts in law, and their advice in constitutionality should be
taken seriously. However, a negative judicial review from either should throw
the matter back to people as represented in Congress, the state legislatures, or
a national referendum, e.g., constitutional amendment.

There are two fundamental worldviews, the Biblical and the
secular/pagan.

The Biblical worldview is distinguished by a personal
Creator who has a purpose for His creation -- Intelligent Design, as it is
coming to be called in the creation/evolution debates. The cosmos in this view
is an "open system" because it has communication with God metaphysically outside
the cosmos.

The secular/pagan worldview is, on the other hand, a
metaphysically "closed system". There is nothing beyond the cosmos with which to
communicate. There is no possibility of anything from without interfering with
the cosmos. Some form of evolution is the only way to explain the way things are
in a cosmic closed system.

Societies have only four ways to form their moral consensus: (1)
raw power struggle; (2) Biblical -- "Come, let us reason together..."; (3) a
secular moral base; or (4) Hegelian consensus-building. The three non-Biblical
ways are found in the closed system of the secular/pagan worldview.
Historically, they developed (more or less) as follows:

Power-struggle is that by which the world has operated
for most of its history. The strongest, most clever, richest, the most talented,
he who by coercion or guile can force his will on others, wins. Discussion means
a contest of wits or arms. Elegantly simple. That is how the pre-Biblical world
ran its affairs.

The Biblical form of government began in the Old
Testament, and then emerged in world history slowly out of the collapse of the
pagan Roman Empire through the development of common law in Western Europe. It
came to be based squarely on the unheard of Biblical principle that every human
being was of equal worth so that government was obligated to treat each person,
no matter their power station in life, as equal before the law. Each person was
guaranteed equal opportunity to discover and pursue his "reason for existence"
(moral fulfillment) under the law and grace of God. The American democratic
republic under God is the best example.

Reasoning together is necessarily the way to establishing a
free-will covenant, such as the Kingdom of God, or a democratic republic under
God. The terms of the covenant and the persons involved must be openly revealed
and freely chosen.

As the secular so-called "Enlightenment" began to replace the
Biblical worldview, other ways had to be found to continue the obvious benefits
of the Biblical heritage. People searched for ways to preserve some sense of
justice and righteousness, rather than reverting back again into pre-Biblical
raw power-struggle.

A secular moral base has been claimed by some
philosophers since the 1800's to preserve that sense of justice and
righteousness, and most secular people think there is such a thing as a secular
moral base. And indeed, the western secular world for most of the 19th century
did share much of the Biblical view on morality.

Secular and pagan people can be marvelously noble and ethical,
but, given their worldview, they can offer no explanation as to the basis
for their moral commitment or obligation. Secular moral commitment has no
intellectual integrity because it can identify no objective moral base. It is
therefore always drifting toward collapse, as indeed happened in the second half
of the 20th century. Secularism is inherently a-moral and is leading the West
into moral free-fall, with no bottom to the pit.

A "thesis-antithesis-synthesis" solution was provided by
Friedrich Hegel. "Hegelian dialectic" sought to resolve the contest between
opposing views (thesis vs. anti-thesis) without
fighting by merging opposites into a syn-thesis.

That is typically accomplished by a process known as "Dialogue
to Consensus", "Values Clarification", or the "Delphi Technique". Thesis and
antithesis talk together until they come to an agreement, the synthesis. But
since there are no objective facts or values, only various viewpoints (relative
truth), dialogue cannot be about logic, fact, or morality, only about bartering
and trade off so that, hopefully, everyone feels good (or, at least, not too
disruptively disappointed) about the conclusion. And thus unity (not truth) is
preserved. But unity not based on truth cannot hold.

Dialogue to consensus is the technique used, often in the
Church, by those who believe unity to be more important than truth. They must
use some such technique because they do not believe there is any truth (or, at
least, not any verifiable truth) around which the human race can be united. Not
being based on either truth or righteousness, it is easily and often subject to
manipulation and deceit.

So, without the Biblical worldview foundation, politics becomes
either open conflict of arms or an endless pragmatic struggle to find consensus
based, not on truth or morality, but on horse-trading and vote-buying. That is
why politics has a reputation for being "dirty". Bismark, the Iron Chancellor of
Germany, remarked that there are two things one does not want to see being made:
sausage and law.

In the end, the center of consensus cannot hold, and so out
comes the bayonet to rescue the disintegrating unity. Hegel and Bismark were
linear predecessors of Hitler.

The Church is thought irrelevant, or worse, because it talks
about real truth and morality, cramping the style of those who seek the freedom
to pursue, not their reason for existence, but what ever they want -- at their
own sovereign discretion. Society has no conscience, and every man does what is
right in his own eyes.

In a Biblical culture, politics is a noble calling
because politics is the art of discerning the will of God for the good of the
people. As the King said, the law is made for man, not man for the law. "Come,
let us reason together" is an invitation to a "reality check", to get at the
facts and the true morality of the matter, not for a power struggle deceitfully
disguised as "dialogue to consensus". The Church then plays the role of the
conscience of society, helping society form a moral consensus by discerning the
will of God in free and open discussion.

We are then ruled by the internalized law and grace of God
(moral consensus). The bayonet is hardly seen because we already govern
ourselves under the law of God.

Marriage
in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman.
Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or
federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal
incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

A constitutional marriage amendment looks like a quick fix for
the homosexual issue, but, based on the above discussion, it has flaws.

1. It works from the wrong end, from the top (constitution) down
rather than from the bottom (moral consensus) up, enforcing a heterosexual
standard for marriage on everyone. It will lull America into the illusion that
the problem has been solved, and back again into complacency.

2. Laws not supported by a moral consensus will end in their own
erosion (as with the "prohibition" attempt to end the sale of alcoholic
beverages by constitutional amendment). A Biblical moral consensus is the
foundation toward which we must work. And that requires the hard work from the
bottom up of repentance, renewal, and rebuilding of the whole moral and cultural
fabric of America and Western Civilization.

3. Putting one more element under the control of the federal
government is working in the wrong direction. It will further expand the
areas of federal control, laying the groundwork for federal control of marriage
and family issues, something not contemplated by our founders, and unhealthy for
society. Laws should be as locally implemented as reason will allow.

4. The constitution is not the proper place for specific
legislation. A marriage amendment ignores the distinction between constitutional
and statutory law. A constitution is the place where the general moral vision of
the people should be stated, not specific issues decided. Except where given by
the constitution to the realm of federal statute, all specific legislation
belongs to state and local jurisdiction.

Our present constitution was written defectively, for it is
almost entirely a technical document, outlining the "due process" by which
decisions shall be made -- with nothing about the moral or spiritual substance
of those decisions. There is no clear indication of spiritual or moral
consensus, leaving the constitution open to secular and/or pagan interpretation.
Like a "Roberts Rules of Order", it outlines the process for debate, but
nothing concerning that substantive content which a national-identity
requires. Taken out of historical context, it appears to presuppose a kind of
values free-for-all.

And that is precisely what deceitful courts, week-kneed
legislators, and an increasingly dumbed-down populace have allowed to happen.
Comments that the Constitution is a "living document" really are claims by
politicians to do whatever they want with it, irrespective of their obligation
to honor the consensus of the people under God. America is being run by
manipulative "dialogue to consensus", not by "Come, let us reason together..."

Political due process and the freedoms established as given in
our constitution emerged out of one and only one worldview -- the Biblical. Our
freedoms will not survive the loss of that worldview. There is no possibility of
freedom enduring apart from the law and grace of God because only the will of
God can make our freedoms inalienable. The Bible or the bayonet.

However, we do have fundamental values and a worldview firmly
entrenched in our common law tradition, going back through English common law,
strongly influenced by the Reformation, and prior to that, by the development of
law in the Middle Ages, such as the Magna Carta, deeply impacted by the
Archbishop of Canterbury. And behind him, lay the whole Biblical tradition going
back to earliest Hebrew law well before 1000 BC. The Ten Commandments are indeed
the bedrock of Western legal tradition.

That common law tradition is the ground of our Declaration of
Independence, referring to God four times as both Savior and Sovereign over
American politics, not just over our personal lives. That view was held almost
universally by the founding fathers, and commonly by jurists on both sides of
the Atlantic. They were not deists, as opponents of the Biblical view claim.

Over the 19th and 20th centuries, however, Christians lost their
ability to stand in public and even present, let alone convincingly defend,
their worldview and spiritual commitment. Christians lost their political
integrity -- they could not say out loud that "Jesus is Lord". Whatever they
said in church, in public they had become indeed practicing deists. They lost
America first to secularists, and now to pagans, leading directly to the
illogical, unhistorical, and illegal (unconstitutional) "separation of Church
and State" as currently enforced. And to a very un-gay agenda.

Moral and spiritual consensus is exactly the issue in need of
public debate (which has been scuttled by our false notion of Church and State
separation). How we go about determining our moral consensus will decide the
other moral and political issues of America. Upon that will rest any enduring
decision we make about marriage. Pasting a Biblical sexual ethic into our
Constitution without an undergirding national moral consensus will create
self-destructive stresses (again, as with "prohibition" ).

The Bible is the world's only monotheistic Scripture. Monotheism
in the spiritual realm naturally gravitates toward monogamy in marriage. And the
Biblical tradition (as Rabbi Dennis Prager said) has alone "put the sexual genie
into the marital bottle". Thus when the Biblical worldview goes, so does
monogamy, which is replaced by the pansexual view that all sexual behaviors are
morally equivalent, in which homosexual behavior is only a small segment of the
wide array of equally valid sexual behaviors.

There are no sound-byte, quick-fixes. The recovery of moral
consensus will not be furthered by a top-down process, only by a bottom-up, long
march to retake the institutions and culture of America --beginning with the
Church, and thus the restoration of our public conscience.

That process will be expedited by an open, candid public
discussion of "Who is Lord? God or civil government? Who gives moral
authority to our social consensus?" As we make a clear worldview decision,
the marriage decision, for better or for worse, will be settled.

We, the
people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish
justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote
the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of
America.

The following alternative amendment to the Preamble is aimed not
at marriage, but in quite another direction:

...do
ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America
upon the laws of nature and of nature's God, as enunciated in the Declaration
of Independence, as developed over centuries of common law tradition, and as
revealed in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures.

This would, of course, provoke a firestorm of protest, mostly on
the grounds that we are now a "pluralistic" nation. "What about Hindus and
atheists? Are they not Americans, too?"

There are good answers to these challenges, and the added text
has some powerful virtues:

1. It is rooted solidly in American history. American history
has been adequately redocumented, after having been trashed for nearly a century
of anti-freedom forces bent on establishing the form of government appropriate
to the French, not the American, Revolution. (See, for example, Original
Intent, by David Barton 817 441-6044 www.wallbuilders.com. Also,
Defending the Declaration by Gary Amos.).

2. It presents a case which can be defended both legally and
logically, for it rests on the foundation of objective ethics, which alone can
give moral, and therefore also legal, authority to due process in civil
government. The secular/pagan worldview cannot support a distinction between
good and evil, and therefore cannot support unalienable rights and freedoms.
Only the Biblical worldview can do that.

3. The Biblical view points to limited government, by which
alone society can remain free. Only the Biblical worldview puts civil government
under an authority higher than itself. The secular/pagan worldview will always,
no matter how well intended, drift into centralization of government and
consequent loss of both moral responsibility and true freedom by the people.

We see that deterioration all about us in Western Civilization.
With secularism/paganism there is no authority higher than the government, so
the government cannot be obligated to honor the freedoms and rights of the
people.

And, ironically, neither can the people be obligated to honor
their duty toward civil government. When government displaces God, we are ruled
by the bayonet -- generally today muffled behind a friendly, ever-growing
bureaucracy, our Government Nanny.

4. The Biblical version of "pluralism" is the only way to
provide for the freedoms and rights imagined by our Constitution. True pluralism
does not hold that everyone's truth is valid for him, as though truth were
"plural" -- a view on which it is logically impossible to act. It holds rather
that although viewpoints are indeed plural, truth is singular. So
all persons, no matter their viewpoints, are invited into the public discussion
-- not because their view is true or right, but rather to find out, in the
contest of public discussion, whether their view might be true and right.

The losers are not shot at dawn, guillotined, or arrested for
hate-crimes, they are able to return in the next round and present again their
case. That is honest pluralism -- plural viewpoints honestly in search of the
singular truth.

The pseudo-pluralism of today is not pluralism at all, it is
totalitarianism working under the guise of "compassion" and "inclusiveness" to
stamp out their (generally Biblical) opposition. Their weapon of choice has
become "hate-crime" law, not to protect the vulnerable, but to silence dissent.

But what about those atheists and Hindus?

The same thing that is now true of Christians, who are forced to
live under a secular government, would be true of non-believers who would be
forced to live (should they choose to remain) under a Biblical government.

The fact is that the ability to live and participate freely in a
government not of one's own persuasion has been a Biblical contribution to the
world, not a secular contribution. 20th century secular states routinely
persecuted to the death those who disagreed with their political philosophy. And
those secular states which count themselves as "liberal democracies" are
steadily drifting into all the control mechanisms inherent to socialism.

Only God can sustain a free people. Judeo-Christian government,
where it is faithfully followed, will always honor the freedoms of non-believers
to participate within the reasonable limits of the law -- i.e., so long as the
nonbeliever does not act or teach to compromise the constitutional freedoms of
others.

The worldview of pansexualism does not allow that freedom for
others. It seems also that the worldview of Islam does not allow for such
freedom. Any view lacking "Come, let us reason together..." as a basic principle
of public policy will be unable to combine plural viewpoints in free and
friendly association with singular truth. And that phrase will not likely be
heard from the mouths of Islamic leaders.

We have raised three key issues. (1) The presenting issue has
been homosexual marriage. Behind that is (2) the question of which worldview and
attendant moral consensus we will choose. But behind both of those is (3) the
matter of truth, and how we find out the truth. How do we know what
we know? Philosophers call it the epistemological issue.

Everybody knows that there is a truth. If you judge by behavior,
it is clear that no one believes truth to be relative. We can behave in only one
direction at a time, not two. So laws, which either mandate or forbid behavior,
have to be a clear and consistent either/or, not an ambiguous both/and.

And everyone has a limit beyond which they will resist certain
behaviors. That is an inevitable consequence of being purposive beings. When our
basic purposes are endangered, we resist, we do not willingly comply. Basic
truths are thus either/or, not both/and. You have to choose one way or the
other. Political parties want to control government because government is all
about coercion (mandating or forbidding) some behavior. Either/or, not both/and.

However much "facilitators" for "dialogue to consensus" may talk
about relative truth, they have their own truth which they are smuggling into
the discussion, enabled by having convinced the participants to relativize, and
thus not defend, their views. The facilitator can then insert his unopposed, and
usually undetected.

Hate-crime laws are being pushed by those who want us to
believe that truth is relative and that everyone can have their own viewpoint.
But the laws themselves are designed to criminalize the expression of opinions
contrary to the promoters of hate-crime law, precisely to prevent honest
discussion so that their side can monopolize public discussion. The claim of
inclusive pluralism is deceitful.

In any event, relative truth is a logical impossibility, so
Pilate's question to Jesus will always reassert itself, "What is truth?"
To which the simple answer is, "Truth is what is -- as against what
is not." Everyone intuitively knows that.

The virtue required in the search for truth, then, is a desire
to know the truth, openness to the truth, a teachable spirit. If I am wrong, I
must want to know, not hide my error. There is no other way learning can proceed
or honest discussion take place. Discussion and debate can then become
cooperative rather than adversarial .

Elijah (I Kings 18) challenged the crowd gathered on Mount
Carmel, "How long will you go limping on two opinions? If Baal be God, then
let's go with Baal. But if the Lord be God, then let's follow Him."

Elijah, representing God, was resting his whole case on an open
appeal to objective evidence. He appealed first to logic, forcing the question
on the table, and then to empirical evidence, up or down, to decide who of the
two was indeed God. The experiment with the two bull offerings was set up so
that the real God would have to show up and prove His own case.

This appeal to logic and fact took place several centuries
before Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle, and over two millennia prior to the "rise
of science". But it gives Biblical folk an intellectually credible paradigm for
dealing with challenges from dwellers of the closed-circle cosmos -- namely,
construct a test based on fact and logic in which each alleged deity will have
to show up and prove his own case.

We challenge, for example, any secularized government (which is
its own God), to show that it has credentials of legitimacy to rule over its
people.

Practicing deist-Christians of the last two centuries long ago
stopped believing that God would do anything so radical as showing up, let alone
prove His case. But if God cannot or will not, then Christians have no honest
testimony to give for the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The true God (according to
Biblical standards) is the God who can do what He promised to do.

The first responsibility of civil government is not to protect
from foreign invasion, it is rather to protect the arena of public discussion
from coercion, to ensure that he who is making public policy decisions is not
holding a gun of coercion, that public legislative debate is open and free.

That is precisely what the American Constitution was written for
-- to ensure that legislative debate was not coerced by any person, that the
people over whom the laws would hold authority would have free access to the
debate on the laws.

The greatest danger always lay with the government itself,
whether George III or George Washington (who knew and stated that fact), which
by nature holds a near monopoly on coercive power. Hence the separation of
powers -- he who holds the gun may not decide how the gun should be used.

The American Constitution is thus a major implementation of the
invitation/command of God: "Come, let us reason together..." God, our
Sovereign, expects and intends to be a part of the political debate, but through
His (unarmed) people as raised up in their spiritual communities (Isaiah
43:8-10). He expects to be challenged, and expects to defend His case openly and
freely. When Christians begin acting like God acts, they will begin winning in
the public arena. God will again give His people the ascendancy.

The second responsibility of civil government is, on the basis
of honest discussion, to uphold righteous laws, i.e., those laws which fulfill
the nation's purpose for existence. That means laws which a righteous and loving
God has mandated, thus implementing the law and grace of God.

A marriage amendment is a panic attempt at a quick fix. It will
not win the war, but it will compromise the constitution.

The long-term goal for winning is deep spiritual renewal,
leading to a renewed Biblical moral consensus in America.

The immediate, short-term tasks for winning the sexuality wars
are two:

(1) Force promoters of homosexuality to defend homosexual
behavior every time they get up to speak. The homosexual agenda will not
survive an open airing of its behavior. Forcing honest, graceful discussion is
the strategy for winning.

(2) Restrict the federal courts from jurisdiction on either
gender, sex, and family issues, or on issues of how the states will handle
religious issues, leaving such issues to state regulation. The authority to
regulate federal courts is constitutionally already in the hands of Congress.

* * *

All this will require a deep intellectual, moral, and spiritual
retooling on the part of Christian leaders, in and out of the Church, the
deepest kind of spiritual renewal.

At present, the Church is unequipped to force an honest Elijah
contest -- for the same reasons that Christians have given away our American
Constitution, which was constructed to promote precisely that honest discussion
of public policy. Christians who have lost their own moral and spiritual
consensus can hardly share it with others.

But not to worry. God is building a new Gideon army, this is a
winnable battle, and you are invited.